


All We Know is Distance

by synchronicities



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, MUCH-NEEDED TALKING, Post-Season/Series 05, Season 6 Speculation, Spoilers, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 14:04:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15642261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synchronicities/pseuds/synchronicities
Summary: They’re either a century and a half too late, or right on time.





	All We Know is Distance

**Author's Note:**

> So I was really gonna be done with writing t100 fic but then I saw the finale, and uh.
> 
> Title [from](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUflCYGa8i4) The Fray.

When Bellamy wakes up to see Clarke smiling down at him, his first thought, perhaps instilled by those first short but formative months on the ground, is that he must still be twenty-three, younger and more hotheaded. It feels like this is his best friend, eighteen and fresh-faced still, doubtless returning to his side after some life-shaking meeting or surgery. He smiles instinctively.

The second, beaten into him by six years of grief and coping and compartmentalization, is that it must be an illusion, and he has to blink.

“Hey,” she says, and the mirage is broken. Bellamy’s vision takes in Clarke’s shorter hair, his ears recognize her rougher, more modulated voice, his brain brings him up to speed with the events of the past weeks. Clarke is alive, and he doesn’t hate her, and she is different. But the way her mouth slants upward, the trust in her eyes when she looks at him – yes, that hasn’t changed at all.

Madi’s voice rises up, unbidden – _she called you every day for six years_ – and at once a myriad of emotions rolls up within him, shame and guilt and a familiar feeling that he’s not sure he wants to name this time.

All he can manage in return is, “Hey.”

Questions clog up, thoughts like _what did you want to tell me before you went to sleep_ , but what comes out is “Why’s it just us?”

Of course, that’s when Jordan comes in and drops the bomb.

* * *

 

Jordan leaves them to check on the cryopods and – with a knowing smirk that had _painfully_ resembled Monty’s – to give them a moment alone.

Overwhelmed, Clarke reaches for the viewing panel’s control switch, closing it and blocking the planet from their view. Bellamy maneuvers them onto a pair of seats on the bridge and she folds herself into his side without protest, her free hand twining her fingers with his. He uses the arm that’s around her shoulder to clutch her even tighter, bringing her chest to his so he feels the rise and fall of her breathing. Clarke buries her face in the crook of his neck, and slowly, he paces his inhales and exhales with hers, waiting for his own heartbeat to slow.

He’s not sure how long they stay like that, breathing as one, but eventually Bellamy’s body stops shaking and Clarke stops sobbing and hiccupping quietly. They sit in the empty bridge, both staring at the dark panel in front of them, the thought of what’s outside it still too much to bear.

One hundred and twenty five _years_.

Eventually Clarke pulls away, takes a deep breath, and wipes her hand on her pants. He feels the loss of her body like a cold shock of air. Back to business as usual, then. “So,” she says, friend and mother and mediator all at once, “We have a lot to talk about.”

* * *

 

On the ring, Bellamy had been sure he’d loved Clarke. It was not a revelation that had come quickly, but rather a conclusion drawn from him replaying their time together over and over, determined to commit the gold of Clarke’s hair and the jut in her chin to memory before the fog of time took that from him, too.

Each time he had turned her face over in his head, thought of the glint in her teeth in the firelight, and relived the first time they had hugged each other lifetimes ago in Arkadia’s early months, he had come to the same conclusion – he had loved her, somehow. He’s no longer sure when it had started, but it didn’t matter. Telling her would not have changed the outcome. They had the same stupidly self-sacrificial streak in them – she still would have volunteered to fix that damn satellite, and the eventual separation would have been worse.

 _Do you have any idea how much she cares about you_?

It’s this line he remembers when she looks at him, uncertain but affectionate. Despite his best attempts to stop it, there’s twenty-three-year-old Bellamy again, turbulent with an emotion he had yet to name, analyzing the lift of Clarke’s eyebrows and the edge of her smile, wondering if she’d loved him in some way too, and crushed because it wouldn’t have mattered.

He takes her hand in his again. How much his own hands dwarf hers is something he had forgotten, and he lets himself relish in the feeling a bit longer. Very soon, life will come knocking at their door once again, and they will no longer have these little moments.

Perhaps she knows it too, and her fingers tighten around his.

“I–”

“Listen–”

She expunges a tiny, shocked laugh at that, and he can’t quite stop himself from smiling back. His smiles always came easier around her. “You first,” he prods, inclining his head.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out. “I know you said you forgave me. But I couldn’t…I….” she falters, “I couldn’t go on without letting you know. You and I – what we have – I can’t lose it. You know that, right?”  

“I know,” he says, bringing up his free hand to sandwich her smaller palm between his. It’s a painfully familiar line, and Finn’s body was buried lightyears away over a century ago. “Clarke, Madi said–”

Her eyes widen, like she knows what he’s about to say. “I’m not done,” she blurts out before her stance relaxes and she averts her gaze. “Bellamy, it’s not fair to you, to just end it at that. I spent a lot of time thinking about it on the ground. You did so much for me, and I’d just…I feel like I took you for granted.” Here, she looks at him again, eyes bright and bottom lip trembling just a tiny bit. “And when you came back, I guess I thought I could fix that. And I thought I did, for a while, when we…” she trails off, looking helplessly at him.

Clarke Griffin, helpless. He never thought he’d see the day.

The old Bellamy, twenty-three and hotheaded and six-and-a-hundred-and-twenty-five years gone, would have fought her on it. But now, older and wiser and a little more head than heart, he’s not so sure.

But how can he tell her when she’s still reeling, and his girlfriend and her daughter sleep in cryopods just a couple of corridors away?

 “Clarke,” he says gently. “You fucked up. We both have. And hell – we both suck at forgiving ourselves, but we can forgive each other, right?”

“But for how much longer?” she whispers, and that’s the question, isn’t it? Bellamy has forgiven Clarke for things he would shoot himself in the foot for, but what’s the limit? Where do they draw the line? She does the same for him. Perhaps it is their way of atoning for the things they cannot make up for. Perhaps it is something else.

“For as long as we can,” he says, because it’s the only answer he can give. They’ve both done their fair share of waiting. “Madi told me you called me every day for six years,” he says. “Is that true?”

She stares at him before nodding slowly. “I didn’t mean to, at first. It just happened. You were… _you_.”

“I wish I had known,” he says, a little too roughly, his hand coming up to caress her cheek of its own volition. He thinks of Becca’s laboratory, Clarke’s hair in a braid, and the weight of her fingers clasped around his waist, and his heart clenches. “I would have done a lot of things differently. Clarke, I _left you_.”

Clarke thins her lips. “Hindsight’s 20/20.” She meets his eyes again, reaching one hand up to cover the one on her face. “It’s all right. The whole time you were up there, I just wanted to let you know. My best friend. My partner. Bellamy, I–” Here she pauses.

The bridge doors slide open, and they spring apart. “I’m back!” Jordan’s cheery voice calls. Clarke looks warily at Jordan, and Bellamy can’t help but think she was going to say something neither of them were ready to hear. “The cryo pods all look good. We can defrost whenever you guys are ready.” Jordan looks between the two of them. “Is everything all right?”

Clarke stands, all business again, and she nods to him. They fall into step on the way to the sleeper cells. Jordan goes on ahead, muttering about this and that setting, but Bellamy and Clarke linger at the entrance, contemplative.

“You think we can do it? Be the good guys?” he can’t help but ask, gazing at rows upon rows of cryopods. Their people, now.

“I don’t know.” Her voice is still hoarse, but she leans her head on his shoulder again, easy as breathing. “But we can try. Together.”

* * *

 

Breaking the news goes about as well as expected. Some – Raven, Madi – are excited, others – Murphy, Diyoza – are gung ho about it. Some – Echo, Emori, Madi – are unsettled; others – Abby, Jackson – are disheartened. 

But it’s not like they have much of a choice. Clarke and Bellamy decide on a diplomatic delegation made up of the usual suspects, and Earth’s last four hundred or so crowd around the ship door, Clarke already with one hand on the switch that will drop the ramp. Bellamy comes up to stand behind her, covering her hand on the lever with his. Her fingers are warm.

“Hey,” he says, just low enough for the two of them to hear. “The air could be toxic.”

She grins up at him. His heart leaps at the sight, and there’s so much to worry about and so many things to do, but maybe now, a hundred and thirty-one years and two planets later, they can afford to give it time.

“If the air’s toxic,” she murmurs back, “we’re all dead anyway.”

They pull the lever.


End file.
